


You Know That Can't Be Bad

by parolacce (peperima)



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-15
Updated: 2008-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peperima/pseuds/parolacce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yamamoto thinks he is luckier than Gokudera. He was prepared, after all, prepared for the mist of time-travel the moment he saw Gokudera and Tsuna trailing behind Lal Mirch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Know That Can't Be Bad

Yamamoto thinks he is luckier than Gokudera. He was prepared, after all, prepared for the mist of time-travel the moment he saw Gokudera and Tsuna trailing behind Lal Mirch.

He knows that if Gokudera goes, he goes too.

Gokudera is waiting for him as he appears. “Should’ve expected you,” he snaps, “I was here all along, and, fuck, I couldn’t stop them from going in to the future!”

“Haha, they couldn’t hear you or something?” Yamamoto jokes.

Gokudera slashes his hand through the cabinet and nothing hits. Yamamoto thinks it’s a magic trick for a second and almost laughs before the utter desperation on Gokudera’s face reminds him it’s real. It’s not a game anymore. It never was.

“What are we now, ghosts?”

Gokudera shakes his head, looks out the familiar window of Tsuna’s room. Yamamoto watches until the starless night swallows up the sky.

\-------------------------------------

“Where are the others?” Gokudera’s harsh whisper breaks through the dark. Yamamoto knows they’re lying on the floorboards of Tsuna’s room, but he can’t feel the smooth knobs of worn chestnut flat against his back, the irregular splinters pinching in to his back. It’s too dark to do anything else when the lights can’t be turned on.

“We’ll find them tomorrow.”

The wrinkles in Gokudera’s clothes rub and rustle. “I saw him, you know.”

Tsuna. Of course. “Me too. He was so young, haha. Looked like a little shrimp back then, with all his clothes strip bare like back in the early days. Remember when he –”

“Shut up.”

(-- professed his undying love to Kyoko, the prettiest girl at school, although Yamamoto never noticed her before Tsuna ran up in a pair of plaid boxers and nothing else. And then Gokudera had shown up and tried to kill him.)

“Hey, now that we’re ghosts, you can hit me all you want now and I won’t feel a thing!” Yamamoto laughs.

 _“Shut the fuck up!”_

Gokudera’s breath comes out in little uneven pants and Yamamoto can’t sleep because all he hears is

(Tsuna. Tsuna.)

 _He isn’t here._

\-------------------------------------

Yamamoto wakes up to the streaming sunshine of dawn wondering if Gokudera had slept at all.

He finds Gokudera standing up already, waiting impatiently at the door. Let’s go, Yamamoto feels him saying, and he gets up, scratches his head, and nods. He’s restive too.

“It might feel a bit weird,” Gokudera mutters before walking through the door and on to the steps. The house is silent.

How many times had Tsuna fallen down these stairs?

Their feet trace the path as though they can sense the worn tracks of youth. It’s a bright blue day, and Yamamoto misses the absence of his bat warm in his hand as they walk past the baseball field and up the stairs to the roof.

Gokudera stops abruptly. “I can’t feel my heart beating.”

Strange, Yamamoto can feel his perfectly fine, the pitter-patter of a small mouse inside his chest. He reaches over and puts his hand over Gokudera’s heart to see. It slides through Gokudera’s body instead, and Gokudera scrambles away, trying to hit Yamamoto. Nothing connects.

They’re not material.

And yet Yamamoto can feel his heart beating.

“What I wouldn’t give for some fags,” Gokudera says, sticking his hands in his pockets. (How can he do that? It’s not like clothing is – Yamamoto loses his train of thought.)

“Don’t have any in your pockets?” Yamamoto says rather redundantly. He can’t think of anything else to say.

Gokudera’s eyes narrow. “No. I left them at ho –”

“Home,” Yamamoto prompts.

“No! Fuck,” Gokudera pushes his face in to his hands, “This is home.”

“I thought Italy was home.”

“The Tenth is where home is,” Gokudera snarls out his conviction, except Yamamoto understands, for once.  _“This is where I learned what family was. This will always be home.”_

“I wonder what they’re doing,” Yamamoto says, trying out the word.  _They’re._  Is he who he was ten years ago?

“Probably dying.”

“Haha, probably, if Reborn’s there too. They got your letter in G-Script, you know. That’s really cool. You must have been bored during school.”

“No,” Gokudera says.

“You were so angry back then,” Yamamoto laughs, “You know, I saw you with Tsuna back – forward – in the future, and you still had that crease on your forehead. Haha, I can see why Hibari thought we were annoying monkeys. But it was really nice seeing you. You smiled a lot more.”

“Shut up,” Gokudera looks away, “Stop bringing it up the past.”

“Do you think they’re going to change after this? We changed after Varia. I think, maybe – maybe we’ll grow up a little more. Except, after we win, we won’t be so somber, haha. Do you think?” Yamamoto presses on. He knows when he goes too far, yet he still pushes, sometimes. Just to rile things up, just to remember days when everything was just a game. And then he stops, because just a little is all he can take before he begins to remember all he lost.

“Are you calling me depressing?” Gokudera stands up, hands shaking. “How do you expect me to be after the Tenth has died? Just because you still think it’s all a fucking game doesn’t mean I do! He’s dead!”

Yamamoto stands up quickly too, putting his hands on Gokudera’s shoulders, trying to smooth out the tension there. Gokudera looks up surprised, not quite angry, and Yamamoto takes the opportunity. “They’re going to do something. It’s our second chance. Don’t be so harsh on your younger self. We were strong too, you know. Strong enough.”  _Stronger,_  he wants to say, because every child has his invincibility. Now all he has for company is the dead waiting to be revenged, except he’s too weary trying to stay alive, trying to keep Gokudera alive.

“You’re touching me.”

Yamamoto takes his hands off quickly. He’s taken it too far again, and Gokudera –

“You’re touching me,” Gokudera repeats, “And – and it didn’t go through. It didn’t slide through like some fucking ghost!”

“Haha, that’s neat!”

“No, it’s not, you freak. Think!” Gokudera punches the mesh fencing and it breaks.

“It’s probably an illusion,” Gokudera says a second later, rubbing his bloody hand against the front of his shirt.

Yamamoto has his hands on Gokudera’s wrists before he’s even realized he’s taken two steps forward. “Let’s wrap this up.”

“No. It’s a fucking illusion,” Gokudera snarls. “Everything is a fucking illusion.”

Yamamoto doesn’t think he’s imagining the blood trickling down Gokudera’s arm, but it dissipates before reaching the ground.

“Shit,” Gokudera laughs shakily, “Shit; you’re an illusion too, aren’t you?”

“No –”

“You fucking are. I know it! You’re always fucking there even when you’re not –” he gasps out shrilly, “not wanted.”

“Snap out of it,” Yamamoto replies, pained. It’s hard to admit Gokudera hurts him the most because he’s alive when everyone else is dead and Yamamoto still can’t have him.

“Fuck,” Gokudera fumbles in his pockets and comes out empty handed. “Fuck, if I jumped off this building, would it hurt? It’s all fucking fake, isn’t it! Everything. All in my mind.”

“No,” Yamamoto reaches out to restrain Gokudera except his hand gets slapped away. He grips Gokudera’s shoulder instead, finds the pressure point on Gokudera’s neck and rubs a warning. “I won’t hesitate; I won’t lose you too!” It comes out harsh and desperate and wrong.

Father. Tsuna.

Father. Tsuna.

Gokudera’s eyes widen. He stops struggling and sudden his head is on Yamamoto’s shoulder where Yamamoto’s always wanted it to be, except – except – if this was an illusion, Yamamoto would die.

“If we – our younger selves – don’t live, don’t –” Gokudera whispers as though afraid to continue, “We would disappear, won’t we.”

Yamamoto has no words, just believes that it really is Gokudera he’s feeling, and wraps his hands tight around Gokudera’s waist.

Gokudera lifts his head up enough so Yamamoto can see his clear eyes, can see the faint flush on his face, and says, “I hope we get along better, you know, after this is all fixed.”

“Why don’t we start now?”

\-------------------------------------

Warm hands haze over his bare shoulders. He can feel them enough; he can tell Gokudera is straining to keep even this much of the illusion, to have faith in what feels so unnatural.

Yamamoto steals a kiss to listen to Gokudera growl, “Fuck –” and even that makes Yamamoto’s chest tighten.

He can’t stop feeling like he’s fucking with nature by daring to make significance out of what should never have happened. (Time – past, future, now – it is theirs to peruse.)

Even if this is an illusion, Yamamoto won’t hesitate to play along. He won’t hesitate to let his hands entwine with Gokudera’s and pull it over his heart, letting him know that it is Gokudera that keeps it beating despite everything.

\-------------------------------------

Mafia men don’t fight for ideals, for ‘right’ or wrong’. They don’t fight for history’s revenge, for posterity’s security.

Here, now.

They fight for each other.


End file.
